by It has been suggested that Mickey Mouse, along with the Coca-Cola label and the swastika, was once the most recognizable symbol in the world. The invincible rodent made his first screen appearance in the 1928 animated short Steamboat Willie which, thanks to a quirk of copyright law, entered the public domain on January 1, 2024. Still, good luck to those who believe now that they will. able to profit from the Mickey character.
Walt Disney, whose company owns (and in fact uses) the mouse, trademarked it as well as securing its copyright. So, while the original, black-and-white Mickey Mouse may be popping up in different guises now, the most famous version of him will, in the words of a Disney spokesperson, undoubtedly “continue to be at the forefront because. is a global ambassador for the Walt Disney Company.”
Those of us who enjoy a multi-billion dollar company being able to continue handing out money thanks to its most popular character will no doubt breathe a sigh of relief at this news. But Steamboat Willie’s appearance in the public eye should bring attention back to one of the great, unsung 20-something figures.th century animation. Ubbe ‘Ub’ Iwerks not only worked alongside Disney in the early days of his empire, but was responsible for designing the Mickey Mouse character.
Although not airbrushed from history, Iwerks’ much lower profile compared to his colleague and employer shows just how brutal the Disney mythmaker was. The story we’re left with is a sanitized – Disneyfied, even – version of what really happened.
Iwerks, the son of an itinerant Dutch barber whom he hated – when he heard of his father’s death, he snapped “Throw it in the pit” – first met Disney when both men were teenagers, and he was working at the company Kansas City the Pesmen- Rubin art studio. Already, the central differences in their personalities could be identified. Iwerks was an extremely talented workaholic who could, if necessary, complete two months’ work in two weeks, rendering hundreds of cels of animation by hand per night. Although Disney was also a trained animator himself, the corporate side of the business was extremely successful.
The two collaborated throughout the 1920s, with Disney very much the senior partner. But by the time they moved to Los Angeles in 1923, their careers took a hit when the first cartoon character they co-created, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, was spun off by Universal Studios, the production company that owned the rights. him. An incensed Disney promised not only to keep all the rights to the characters he was responsible for, but also to come up with a figure that would be much more successful – and iconic – than Oswald ever was.
The story of how Mickey Mouse was created was often a story that Disney liked to tell later in life, in exaggerated detail. He claimed that he came up with the idea of an anthropomorphic mouse on a long train journey from New York to California, or was inspired by a pet he kept during his Kansas City days. Both, or either, could be true.
But what is most incontrovertibly the case is that Iwerks came to the rescue of Disney when he was left without a character that he could make money, and between the two of them, they came up with a figure that was originally called Mortimer Mouse. Until Disney’s wife Lillian, who didn’t like the name she saw as too raunchy, suggested changing Mortimer to Mickey.
There is no doubt that Disney was very invested in the character, especially as he voiced him for years, and was responsible for coming up with Mickey’s personality quirks that largely gave him the character he was. it is important to say that it still exists today. . However, in the rush to claim credit, Disney either inadvertently or intentionally sidelined Iwerks’ work when coming up with the iconic design for Mickey Mouse.
For a long time, Disney took ownership of the character, and today the accepted party is, in the words of one Disney employee, “Ub designed Mickey’s physical appearance, but Walt gave him his soul.” But this is an inaccuracy. As Iwerks biographer Jeff Ryan put it: “[Iwerks] the person who was doing most of the work behind the scene. And when Walt was taking credit, it was Ub who was denied credit. As he was never satisfied with anything, Walt continued to make more and more pranks to extend the story of Mickey Mouse’s creation. And the most shocking thing at first was that it was Walt who did it. He didn’t do it.”
The reasons for this are more complex than they might appear, and, as Ryan suggested, “When you put Walt and Ub together, they could do almost anything.” But Iwerks quickly tired of Disney’s showmanship and being treated as a junior partner. Their working relationship ended in 1930, when – briefly – Disney, when asked by a young admirer at a party to draw him a sketch of Micky Mouse, Iwerks was given only paper and pen and said “Draw it”. Watch a furious Iwerks storm out of the party and start his own animation studio, Iwerks Studio. (He was paid less than $3,000 for his 20 percent stake in the company, a bet that would be worth billions today.)
In an ideal world, this would have overtaken Disney, perhaps even replaced it. But Disney knew the importance of hiring talent so he surrounded himself with talented young animators. (Although Iwerks was responsible for discovering Chuck Jones, the man who would later go on to create the Looney Tunes cartoons.) Iwerks struggled to break through on his own terms during the 1930s, and in 1940 returned on Disney. Only this time he was not an animator, but a visual effects supervisor: an acknowledgment that the only way the working relationship between the two men could be restarted was if Iwerks was doing something new and different from his his previous efforts.
For the next 25 years, Iwerks worked diligently and successfully across many of Disney’s enterprises. He was responsible for pioneering the integration of live-action and animation on screen, which he first did in 1946’s highly maligned musical drama Song of the South and then, much more impressively and successfully, it was perfected in the Disney era success, Mary Poppins.
He also worked on Disney theme park attractions, designing shows such as The Hall of Presidents and the It’s A Small World ride. Demonstrating his excellence, he moved from Disney to design the terrifying special effects for Hitchcock’s The Birds, for which he was nominated for an Oscar – having already received a special Academy Award in 1960 for “printer design improved optics for special effects and matte shots”.
Animation generator, special effects pioneer, theme park visionary: Ub Iwerks should, by rights, be remembered as well as Disney, Jones or any of the great figures in 20th century entertainment. Perhaps it’s not because of Disney’s desire to exclude him from taking credit for his achievements – although he was named a Disney Legend in 1989, after his death in 1971 – but also because of his composure.
He loved to take a car apart and put it back together in a weekend, and was known to build cameras from parts he found lying around his garage. He took up archery, only giving up after repeatedly hitting bullseyes. And as Ryan said of Iwerks: “There is a famous story in animation circles about Ub Iwerks’ brief love for bowling. He got better and better and better until one day he bowled 13 overs in a row. And as soon as he did that, he’s like, okay, I’ve solved bowling. And he never smelled it again.” (Much the same could be said of his early career with Disney, in which he excelled at innovation and trendsetting animation, before leaving his unbroken strikeout record, never to return.
The treatment of Iwerks in the House of Mouse may be a largely forgotten incident, but it remains common knowledge in popular culture circles. The 1996 Simpsons episode The Day The Violence Died features a homeless man, Chester J Lampwick – voiced by none other than Kirk Douglas – who tells Bart that he is responsible for the creation of the character Itchy the mouse from the show Itchy and Scratchy. Roger Meyers Sr, a no-nonsense digger at Disney, coerced him and denied his royalties, even joking about him being cryogenically frozen. Lampwick eventually wins, being awarded an $800 billion settlement that bankrupts Meyers’ son and ends Itchy and Scratchy.
But the most memorable moment in the episode is when Meyers declares in court that “Animation is based on plagiarism! If someone hadn’t plagiarized The Honeymooners, we wouldn’t have had The Flintstones. If someone didn’t rip off Sergeant Bilko, there would be no Top Cat.” And, the episode may have added, if there was no Ub Iwerks, there would be no Mickey Mouse, and probably no Disney empire as we know it today. So if Iwerks’ name becomes better remembered when Steamboat Willie enters the public domain, this can only be a good thing.
